Forum:Unofficial 140 patch (2010-2012)
I knew that an unofficial patch existed but I've never tried it before today, because I thought it wouldn't change gameplay significantly. Actually, it changes gameplay very much. Here's the thread, the download link and the corresponding readme. For a complete list of bugs see Forum:Bugs_in_1.40n Trying it out earlier would have saved me the time I did research on the defensive effect of Lucky and Prayer (first line of version 1.40n changes). My first expression: The readme mentions many changes to the AI. I saw a Naga owned by an enemy wizard for the first time. Lairs and Keeps also contained chaos creatures from time to time. The game tries to search for a better starting position. Downside is, the game may fail and freeze. This happened 2 times, one time even with normal landmass. As said before a lot was done, but some gameplay issues stayed untouched, for example using the Surveyor to discover unexplored locations of towns, or running in circles to reach 50 combat turns (escaping equally fast enemy units). Unfortunately, a lot of bugs, I knew of, weren't fixed (most of them can be found here): #You can summon Phantom Warriors etc. to locations which are unreachable for enemy melee units. For example I use that trick to kill Air Elementals one after each other in Sorcery Nodes. #You can permanently own Phantom Warriors, Air Elementals, Phantom Beasts etc. by using the spell Word of Recall and not winning the battle (losing, retreating or escaping the enemy for 50 turns). Phantom Beasts cost 4 mana per round and have 4 moves on the overland map. Air Elementals cost 8 mana per round and are the best scouting units in the game. #You can use Plane shift to melt with nodes without defeating its guardians. #If you use Heroism on the overland map and disperse it, your unit will keep its (ultra) elite rank until the next round. This way your enemy can't dispel Heroism. #I haven't tested it, but I didn't see it mentioned in the readme: Your unit will stay protected by Guardian Wind, even if the enemy dispels it. ::Yeah, I've been watching the development of these patches. The wiki will stay with the final "official" release (v.1.31), but it is good to know that work is still being done. ::I'm not sure what you mean about the Phantom Warrior trick and being unreachable. That sounds interesting! ::The permanent summons are listed on each page, including demons, the sorcery units, and the fire elementals. (that's all I can think of for now). ::Thanks for the information. MysticX2 (talk) 22:00, May 10, 2013 (UTC) ::Have you tried to contact the author? He might be able to answer questions nobody else could. At least, you should mention its existence in this Wiki, perhaps even on the main page. In my opinion every trivia of that game should be mentioned. I'd also tell people to use DOSBox on newer computers. ::Now the explanation of the unreachable units trick. There are combat tiles you can't move to, but where you can summon units to. I often see the AI summoning Phantom Warriors/Beasts and Fire Elementals in the corner of the city walls. Most other unreachable spots lie on the edge of the combat map. ::The only useful situation, I know of, is defeating multiple Air Elementals in Sorcery Nodes with the help of Phantom Warriors. The Node may contain Phantom Warriors, Nagas or Phantom Beasts, too. ::*Goal: sacrifice 1 Magic Spirit and Summon 2 Phantom Warriors to kill 1 Air Elemental guardian in Sorcery Nodes. (With 4 Phantom Warriors you can kill 2 Air Elementals and so on.) ::*Attack Sorcery Node with 1 Magic Spirit. The Air Elementals will advance ::*Summon Phantom Warrior #1 in the right-down-most corner of the combat map. I am speaking of a combat tile which is halfway out of the screen. The Air Elementals will kill the Guardian Spirit, but won't move forward afterwards, because they can't reach your Phantom Warrior. ::*Summon Phantom Warrior #2 in the left-up neighbored combat tile of where Phantom Warrior #1 is standing. The Air Elementals will move to the feet of Phantom Warrior #2, but can't attack yet. ::*Wait. Air Elemental #1 will attack Phantom Warrior #2, kill it, but also lose at least half of its hit points. The other Air Elementals will idle. ::*Come out of the wood with Phantom Warrior #1. Air Elemental #1 will fight against Phantom Warrior #1 and will be killed eventually. Patches You have a good point about mentioning this on the wiki, although I don't think that every article that has been altered needs to mention patches. My thinking, at the moment, is to possibly add a statement about the patches, creating a link to a wiki page that covers nothing else but patches (after all 1.31 is a patch itself)...official and not. Outside links would be on that page...but it will require some research, and I'll make the make the edit based on how I think it will fit best. Thanks for the input! MysticX2 (talk) 11:46, May 11, 2013 (UTC) :Well, I quite like these "bugs" like silent node takeover or permanent combat summons. The things that needs to be patched are spells that don't work, such as Evil Presence or Cloak of Fear. Anyway, I think a page that covers the differences between all the patches, both official and community, is good to have here. By the way, I ran onto Guardian Wind undispellable missile immunity recently in one of my games - it may be considered proven (like, few units of Champion Slingers were unable to punch through after it has been dispelled). Twilight Sparkle the Alicorn Princess (talk) 13:44, May 11, 2013 (UTC)